


A Matter of Time

by WaywardTimeLord



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Human, Multi, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-30 01:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15741684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaywardTimeLord/pseuds/WaywardTimeLord
Summary: When Silas poses as Klaus to trick Caroline and stake her in the woods, Caroline momentarily wakes up on The Other Side, where some familiar faces convince her to go along with a plan to change everything.Starts in 5x12 of TVD, with plans to explore every flashback ever shown to us of who the originals used to be. Klaroline, with the possibility of some ElijahxCaroline. (Mostly a friendship)





	1. Inro: Part One

Caroline probably shouldn't have trusted him. Klaus Mikaelson had never brought anything good in his wake, and if he had come back to Mystic Falls, it most likely meant bad news. But when he had said her name, as gently as ever, it brought up the same thoughts that it always did. The traitorous thoughts that Caroline knew she shouldn't have. The ones that told her she could trust him. The memories of his voice so soft as he told her she was safe, that she knew he would never hurt her.

When he asked her to take a walk with him, Caroline knew she should have told him to go to hell. She knew she should have reminded him that they weren't friends, that Klaus, the big bad wolf, was still the villain of the story. Again, those pesky memories were what stopped her. The memories of him rifling through a thousand years of his history to pull her out a prom dress for no other reason than that she had smiled at him and asked nicely. The memory of hearing him spare Tyler's life because he had made her happy on a night that was important to her.

So the two walked into the woods to talk.

Caroline was the first to speak, “Everyone said you were gone for good.” If her voice had betrayed perhaps a slight tinge of something other than relief, they both ignored it.

"It's true." Klaus' voice in return was soft, but yet seemed to wallop Caroline in the gut. Klaus continued. "But I never meant to go without saying goodbye."

"You don't owe me an explanation." She retorted. She was truly angry with him for it too. They weren't together; they have never even been friends. He made sure of that himself, every time she blindly tried to reach out to him. That's why she was angry with him. That's why she had to say what she said next.

"You're moving on; by all means, just go." It was her turn to push him away.

"That's just it isn't it? I never had any intention of moving on."

Those words were what hit her the hardest. The confirmation that Klaus, of all people, didn't want to forget her. He didn't want to leave her behind even if he left everything else. It was what she had always wanted Tyler to tell her.

Klaus shifted his weight and took a deep breath inward, "Truth is: I've tried to stop thinking about you, and I can't."

There was a split second where Caroline's heart let itself jump for joy, and it basked in the kind of love she had wanted way back when she was still human. The type of love that everyone always gave freely and entirely to Elena.

It was only a split second- she could forgive herself for a split second, couldn't she? But Caroline knew she couldn't let herself enjoy the attention any more than the half moment she couldn't help. She had to get just a little further away from him, and she had to stop looking into those eyes. She took a few steps forward, but that didn't stop him from speaking once more.

  
"Come to New Orleans."

Caroline couldn't stop the exasperated sigh she let out. This whole conversation was all too much to handle. She lifted both hands to her head and rubbed her temples, looking into the woods and contemplating an escape route. Running would be easier. It seemed like the only option she had, while she openly ignored answering his request. Caroline couldn't open her mouth to say no, without fear of her temptation to say yes.

"What are you afraid of?" Klaus talked to her back, voice still soft, still with hope. It was that hope she heard that scared her. It matched too familiarly with something inside her she felt when she played his voicemail back to herself. It was too close to what thumped inside her when he promised her that her future would be bright and beautiful.

"You! I'm afraid of you." She turned back to him now, to tell him to his face what she feared.  
She was truthful now, to both him and herself. She knew everything he was capable of, and if even for a moment she gave into the hope he inspired in her for the future of something between them, she was afraid she would be proven wrong. Caroline saw the good in him; she couldn't deny that, but she could still see the bad. The possibility of him committing another spiteful massacre was too real. If Caroline gave into wanting something with him, and he broke her trust, then he would lose it forever, she would never give it again. That was her fear.

"Wouldn't be more accurate to say you're afraid of yourself? Your darkest desires? Elena was right, wasn't she? Deep down, you long to have your perfect feathers ruffled." With each word he took another step closer to Caroline, his voice becoming more venomous every syllable. Caroline knew what Klaus sounded like when he was angry, and this wasn't it.

"How do you know what Elena said to me in that cell?" It wasn't a question, it was an accusation, and they both knew it.  
Dropping the charade, but not donning his real face, Silas pinned Caroline against the tree behind her, with the strength she should have expected from a ten thousand years old immortal.

"Then again, there's so much to be afraid of isn't there? Like what I'll do to you if your friend Bonnie doesn't come out of hiding. Where is she?"

The hands that were pushing her into the bark of the tree were rough and caused her so much more pain than Klaus would ever inflict on her, Caroline already knew who it was that was doing this, yet she still heard herself whisper out, "Silas." She couldn't understand why he wore Klaus' face, even now, as both of them knew it wasn't real. The anger on Klaus' face wasn't his own and wasn't something Caroline ever wanted to be directed at her ever again.

Silas pushed Caroline's shoulders harder into the tree he had her pinned against and tightened his grip of her neck. "Where is she!" He screamed into her face with such force and anger Caroline couldn't stop herself from clenching her eyes shut in fear and pain. The hand Silas had clasped around her throat prevented her from moving her head in any way he didn't approve of, and it seemed that he wanted nothing more than to invade her personal space.

"She's not at home; she's not anywhere. Bonnie is playing games with me, and I don't like it." With the hand not holding her neck, Silas pushed back the hair from her right ear, pulling it into a fist with a pull. His lips almost brushed against the shell of her ear as he whispered, "Tell her I'm looking for her. Tell her to come out of the shadows. Tell her that this," Silas thrust a stake into Caroline's heart, and ice replaced the hot blood in her veins, "is only the beginning."

When she opened her eyes again, it didn't feel like waking up; the sensation was more akin to unraveling a memory of being awake. Moving was different than it should have been, dreamlike and too fluid to be real. Things that shouldn't ever be forgotten weren't needed anymore: breathing, blinking, existing. Caroline felt dizzy, and as though she should know where she was, but her head was too full of cotton to reach the other half of her train of thought.

It wasn't until she saw Shiela Bennett that she could place where she stood. The Other Side.

"Hello, Caroline." Miss Sheila had always been kind to her growing up, and the same soft voice she had heard so often in her formative years, during sleepovers at Bonnie's gram's house, emanated from the ghost before her.

"Am I dead?" Caroline knew what happened when a vampire received a stake to the heart, but Silas had only gotten in her head, right? The same way he had made Klaus believe that there was a piece of the white oak stake inside of him for who knows how many hours. This vision had to be another trick; it had to be. She couldn't be dead; she wasn't.

Without her consent, Caroline began to cry in a panic. "Oh my God, oh my God, I can't be, I can't."

"Hush now, sweet thing." The Bennett ghost said, scolding her so familiarly. "You are."  
Caroline took a sharp intake of breath, new and fresh tears spiraling down her cheeks. Her hands rose up to her hairline, as so often they did when she began to fall to pieces.

"Oh my God, oh my-" She began her chant once more, as though it would make everything less real. As if, if she said those words enough she would wake.

"Caroline Forbes, you need to listen to me," Sheila interrupted, " you are dead," Caroline's face crumpled again as she let out a sob of anguish, "but you will not be dead forever."

"What? What do you mean?" Caroline asked, wondering again, briefly if this was Silas playing with her mind. Some brainwashing technique he was using to convince her to join him on his crusade to tear down the other side. After all, if breaking the divider meant she could go back to the land of the living, she'd help him, wouldn't she? But he didn't need her to be on his side, she had nothing to offer him, only Bonnie could do the spell, and nobody knew where Bonnie was. He had no reason to pretend.

"I mean, you come here every time your heart stops, you just never remember it."  
Caroline let out a breath of relief, and let the tension her anxiety had formed ease, her shoulders dropping and eyes drying. Just as a smile of comfort began to curl at her lips, another Bennett apparition appeared to her. Caroline knew with all of her heart that this was someone that had no business being on The Other Side.

"Bonnie." Caroline breathed out.

"Hey, Care." Her best friend smiled at her, with her tears falling down her cheeks.

"No. No Bonnie, you shouldn't be here. Bon, you can't be. You're not dead; you're fine. You're not here."

"I am. I have been all summer, Caroline. Ever since I brought Jeremy back."

"No," Caroline shook her head, this wasn't real, she knew it wasn't real- Bonnie Bennett wasn't dead, "Bon tell me this isn't real."

"It is real Care, but it's going to be fine, hey," Bonnie came forward and grasped her best friend by the sides of her face, wiping away the tears, "it's all going to be okay."

"No it's not," Caroline choked out, "it's not okay that you're dead Bonnie."

"Caroline, please, we don't have a lot of time before your heart restarts, and you wake up, and you forget all of this. You need to take a breath and let us talk. We have a plan, and we need you. Care," Bonnie's big brown eyes bore into Caroline's soul, "I need you, Caroline."

"Okay."

"We found a way to put Silas back into that cave."

"You did?! Oh my God, Bonnie how?" The look on Bonnie's face was something Caroline knew well; it meant 'I love you, but stop talking,' so she bit her tongue.

"It took every Witch on The Other Side, but we found something. It's the only thing we could find, but I don't think you'll like it."

"Why not?"

"Because to do it, we have to get rid of all of the vampires."

"You can't do that Bonnie. I'm a vampire, Stefan and Elena are too, we're your friends, you can't just rid of us!" Caroline can't remember the last time she yelled at her best friend like this; but this wasn't who Bonnie was, she'd never let her friends die.

"Yes, we can Care, but not like how Esther had planned, we don't have to kill anyone, we'll be saving them. Everyone who ever turned. We can prevent the creation of vampires."

"Prevent it? That happened a thousand years ago; it's not like we have a time machine." There was something in Bonnie's eyes that suggested otherwise, that made Caroline question herself for a moment. "Do we?"

Bonnie smiled mischievously. "We kind of do. With every witch on this side, we have the power to go back. Every person that vampires have killed over the past thousand years will get a chance to live. The Salvatore brothers could live there lives as humans, you wouldn't have been in the car crash that almost killed you, Elena wouldn't have been forced become a vampire. Caroline," Bonnie's grasp of her cheeks firmed by the smallest fraction with her urgency. "There would be no reason for anyone to go looking for the cure. Silas won't ever wake."

Caroline was taken aback, "No, that's not a solution, Bonnie, that's not anything close to a solution. If Stefan and Damon never turn, then both of them would have died in the civil war. And, yeah, you're right, Elena wouldn't have become a vampire, because she would have died at 16 with her parents the first time she went over Whickery Bridge because Stefan wouldn't have been there to save her. And in case you hadn't noticed, I wasn't the greatest person when I was human. I'm stronger, better, kinder the way I am now vs. the way I used to be. Preventing the creation of vampires won't save anyone, it'll just kill them differently."

"It'll save me, Caroline." Bonnie's voice was whisper soft, and desperate as she looked into Caroline's eyes.

"You have to prevent Esther from casting the spell that turned her children into vampires." It was Sheila that spoke now. "Because if you don't Jeremy Gilbert will become a Hunter and die resurrecting Silas, leaving Bonnie to do what she always does: save her friends. My granddaughter, your best friend, will needlessly and we will both lose her forever."

That was what won the fight within Caroline, if it was between vampirism and Bonnie Bennett, Bon won every time. "Even if I agreed to this it's still not possible. It's not like you can re-write history!"

"With the power of every witch whose ever died because of the creation of vampires, we have just enough strength in numbers to re-write one line. One line that'll change the whole supernatural history book." Bonnie let go of her cheeks, "You have to be the one Care. You're the only one that can be that new line."

"This is a lot to take in, let me think."

"Caroline, please. We can't do this unless you let us. We need you, and we don't have a lot of time." Bonnie's voice sounded more desperate than Caroline had ever heard it, and Caroline couldn't help but try to calm her.

"What do you need me to do?" Caroline didn't like the sound of the plan they were speaking of so desperately, but her best friend was dead. Bonnie Bennett was gone, and her ghost was standing in front of her weeping and begging her for her help, there was nothing that Caroline wouldn't do for her.

Sheila came in close and clasped one of Caroline's hands in hers, and Bonnie took the other. "Say you'll do it. Say yes." The two Bennett ghosts held hands, completing a little circle of three.

"I'll do anything to bring you back Bonnie."

That was when the agony began. It felt like a fire worse than standing in broad daylight without the ring that protected her from it. It was the sort of pain she caught flashes of only a handful of times in her life. It was worse than the splinters the wolves embedded in her skin all over, or the sunlight her father exposed her to over and over again, even breathing in vervain as if every breath filled her body with a thousand razor blades couldn't compare to this hell. Caroline wasn't even sure if she had screamed or not, but she did think she had caught the faintest glimpse of what looked like millions of dark shadows standing behind her best friend and her grandmother. The end of the pain only came when there was nothing but blackness.

The relief of blacking out didn't last more than a single moment, to be replaced by more pain. This new pain was different though; the fire she had felt seconds before felt as though her soul was ripping in half. What she felt now was on her skin, less an indescribable feeling, more a feeling of being boiled from the inside out.

When her eyes open, Caroline knows she's in reality, this time around. The land of the living, or at least undead in her case. She's still in the woods, but more than that, she's in a cauldron of boiling water in the middle of an altar of blood. There's only a single dark witch before her now, illuminated by the torches surrounding her, covered in blood. When Caroline said she'd do anything, this wasn't what she thought her next moments would be.


	2. Intro: Part Two

Caroline tore herself out of the tub of bubbling water to instantly recognize two things about her new status. One: she was entirely stripped, outdoors without even her daylight ring. Two: it was daybreak. By hauling herself out the cooking water, she only succeeded in exposing herself to the full brightness of the ascending sun, and to the agony she was that increased by what seemed like a thousand percent.

As her skin smoked and crackled, Caroline cried out in shock and ran as quickly as her supernatural speed allowed her towards the nearest shadow. The shade cast by a neighboring tree was her only salvation as she could feel her healing factor begin to struggle to knit her burned skin back together.

"What the hell!" Caroline screamed out at the woman standing on the altar. She screamed it out as loudly as she could, with as much anger as she could muster through the pain that was still pulsing through her. Caroline hoped any witches who could hear her from the other side, excluding Bonnie, who had a hand in that spell would feel glad that they were already dead.

With only an individual spell the witches on The Other Side had given Caroline a glimpse of pain worse than anything she had ever felt, all stacked on top of each other. Caroline understood what torture was; she'd been there, done that. Whatever that abracadabra had done to here was so much worse. As a vampire, her skin restored itself and left her unscathed on a physical level, but whatever the magic did still hurt more than she could explain. Caroline's head was throbbing, every muscle inside of her body felt stretched and torn, her veins seemed like they were rubbing against themselves, pumping dust instead of blood. It was as if the witches cleaved her soul in half with a rusty chainsaw, and put it back inside of her still bloody. Even with her healing factor, none of her pain ebbed.

"Calm yourself, Demon." The sorceress spoke with malice in her voice, raising it hardly above a whisper. Caroline stood nearly twenty feet away from her, outside the natural grove where the altar was formed, still cowering in the safety of the shade the tree provided. If the witch hadn't been bathing in the sunlight, Caroline knew the temptation of ripping her throat out in retaliation might have been a little more than a brief revenge fantasy she played out in her mind.

"What the hell just happened?" Caroline repeated her question to the witch. "What did you do to me?"

The witch, a dark woman with black hair in knots, tied in places with cloth beads, looked at Caroline up and down for a moment with something in her eyes almost akin to boredom. After a time, she turned her head away from the blonde and ignored the question entirely. She instead walked forward towards the copper tub of boiling water that Caroline had emerged from moments ago, whispered a few words of power, and plunged her arms into the basin. As she began to pool the water in her hands and wash the blood that was still drying on the skin of her arms and face, she spoke to Caroline without looking at her, again in a voice low and gruff with fatigue.

"I was told that the spirits would explain everything to you before they sent you to me." The water in the cauldron turned faintly pink with the blood washed from the witch's fingers; Caroline could smell it even from where she stood and recognized it as an animal's sent from her brief time on the Stefen bunny diet. "Either they didn't have the time to tell you everything, or you didn't listen." The dark woman finished cleansing herself and brought her eyes back to Caroline, "Which is it then?"

Caroline didn't like the accusation the witch produced with her tone and began to grit her teeth with indignation. She had once told Matt Donavan that she found it hard to treat someone who hated her with kindness, add that to being boiled alive and thrown naked into the sunlight, you end up with one very unhappy Caroline Forbes.

Without thinking, Caroline straightened her back and clenched her fists at her sides. Donning her 'mean girl' face, Caroline stepped forward closer to where the witch stood, remaining in the protective shade of the tree, but no longer holding on to the bark of it or hiding from view. "Neither." Caroline took considerable effort to convey every drop of venom she could into her words, her eyes shooting daggers into the witch with the higher than thou attitude, "Two minutes ago, I got a stake to the chest by an immortal psychopath disguised as a different immortal psychopath. I woke up on The Other Side and was told my best friend in the world had been dead for months!" Caroline took another threatening forward, trying to express her frustration at the drastic turn her afternoon has taken, "So bite me if I wasn't taking notes on the witchy grand master plan of ending all vampires and re-writing history."

"So they did explain. If you understood what task you were taking on, why ask me?" Caroline thought the brunette had the air of a mean-spirited teacher speaking down to a crying child, like she took victory in someone else's pain and confusion. "The spell wouldn't have worked unless you consented to take part in it, so why did you if you were only going to moan about it to me once you arrived?"

Caroline bit her tongue so hard it drew blood. More violent fantasies flickered through her mind, all of them involving the fresh blood pooling in her mouth being that of the condescending sorceress. "Someone I can't live without looked me in the eye and told me she needed me, so I agreed." She spoke through tightly gritted teeth. "I didn't know I was signing up for your freaky vampire torture fetish with me naked in the woods being boiled alive. That part wasn't something I would have given my hearty approval of!"

Caroline gestured her arms up and down her entire bare body, then to the ritualistic blood sacrifice alter in the middle of the woods, striving to point out to her how insane this whole situation was.

"This all was necessary. Magic isn't something that you can take from with nothing to give in return. There is a balance to all things. Even with the power of hundreds of thousands of witches, no one could just," She snapped her fingers loudly, "make you appear a thousand years before you were even a thought in your mother's mind."

It was then that Caroline staggered a bit in her anger. Was she sent back in time? That couldn't be right. She had personally experienced tons of impossible circumstances, but time travel was a big stretch. Turning into a vampire? Check. Werewolf-boyfriend trying to eat her? Twice. Shadow selves, ghosts, a witch best friend, hybrid boyfriends, and a history teacher with a monster hating alter-ego? That was a Tuesday in Mystic Falls. Time travel wasn't on the table; it was too Marty Mcfly, not enough Bella Swan.

The witch continued, "The pain was something we couldn't prevent, time is a fickle mistress. For as long as it takes for the changes you will cause to take effect, there will be two timelines occurring concurrently ten centuries apart. It is because of this that we had to separate your very spirit into two halves. One split half went to you here, the other to the girl who'll wake in the woods where you fell."

Caroline swallowed a lump in her throat; this was beginning to sound too real. The other woman began to step slowly towards her as she spoke.

"The pain will pass as the two of you continue to lead separate lives. Eventually, when you succeed here in your path, this new history will take hold, and everything that leads you here will be rewritten. Our spell will make sure your actions here will take root, and once this timeline solidifies, both the girl in the woods before me now and the girl a thousand years from today shall fade into non-existence. Caroline Forbes will have never been born into a world with vampires; and she will live, and die, human."

The small but sharp intake of breath that broke itself through Caroline's lips betrayed her. Her damnable memories filtered past the backs of her eyelids: Klaus standing in the Gilbert house telling her that he knew how she preferred being better than who she had been. The dark woman's black eyes seemed to see right through her, into her thoughts and judged her for them. The witch stopped her march towards Caroline when she met the shade of the tree, yet she remained standing in the light only toeing the shadow.

"My descendant, your friend Bonnie, will have never died bringing the hunter back to life. No one will need a cure and no one will Silas back to power. You agreed to this. To save your friend, to protect every person ever to suffer and die at the hands of your kind. To be here is only the first step of many. Do not falter now, do not covet your power so urgently that you let millions of innocents perish. Do not be so shallow."

That was what deflated whatever fight was left in Caroline. Pulling the Bonnie card had already won the witch the argument, but then she had to hit Caroline where she hurt.

"How do I do this? What do I have to do?"

"Live. Spend your life here in this village as if you were a natural human, let the people here become your new friends and allies. Never reveal yourself to be the monster you are, and when it comes to it: you must protect the Mikealson family. If Esther loses any one of her children, the grief will drive her mad; she will bend nature in ways it should never be. You are only here to prevent that from happening."

"For how long?"

"For the rest of your existence. Until the day my friend Esther dies her natural death having never turned her family into monsters. That will be the day the world exist free of the plague of vampires."

"So, you're telling me: when Esther dies, I die?" Another memory played itself in the back of her mind, her eighteenth birthday, the day of her funeral. Her ears rang with the sound of her own voice breaking as she whispered softly, ' _I don't wanna die_.'

"It will not be death. You will fade from this existence quietly and painlessly, and one day the girl you were will have a life to lead."

"That's not exactly a comfort. That girl won't be living a life she has control over"

"Perhaps not, but it is what it should be. Do you agree to fulfill your part in this?"

Caroline knew if she dwelled on her selfish fears of her death, or whatever the woman wanted to describe her life ending as, she would back out of all of this. So instead she forced herself to think of Bonnie, Alaric, Vicky Donavan, Jenna, of every person that had to die because of the vampires in Mystic Falls. Like the man Caroline killed after turning. Or the witches she massacred to protect Bonnie. All of the death that surrounded her and her friends for the past few years, everything that could be prevented. Caroline felt as if she stood at the edge of a cliff, and only by jumping over the side could she help the ones she loved from so much suffering. It was her father that leads her to leap, the way his body had looked as he lay dead on the hospital floor where he had been stabbed to death, the way his blood had smelled delicious to her. Her shame in the moment for being a monster. She leaped over the cliff before her.

"I'll do it."

"Good." For the first time, the dark woman smiled at Caroline and took a step into the shade of the evergreen she stood beneath. Extending a hand, she offered Caroline a necklace with a corded leather strap and sizeable blue stone hanging at its base. Caroline didn't need to ask what gem it was; she knew what Lapis Lazuli looked like by heart. Taking the offering and fastening it around her neck, Caroline tentatively reached her hand into a ray of sunlight and breathed a breath of relief as it didn't cause her skin to catch fire.

"Now, let us begin."


	3. The First Step

"Whats the first step?" Caroline asked. If she got this through with as quickly as possible, she thought, then the idea of her life ending wouldn't have the time to catch up with her.

"First, you need to put some clothes on. We can't have you exposed like this for all the world to see, not unless we want to start an uproar."  
Caroline might have blushed if she had any more modesty, but no one had ever accused Caroline Forbes of being self-conscious about her appearance. She had fought her fair share of insecurities in her life, of course, but the majority of them were about what she thought were flaws in her personality, not her physical presence. She was confident in her body, and four years of showering with the other cheerleaders had lead up to her feeling completely unabashed standing bare in front of others. Of course, Caroline thought, a woman who was comfortable with herself and her body must be completely foreign in this period.

"In my defense, I didn't exactly have time to pack." It was a barbed joke on Caroline's part; she knew she had to do this, but no one said anything about dragging her feet along the way. The task before her was almost too overwhelming to comprehend: time travel, soul splitting, two timelines, wiping herself from existence. When she crawled out of bed this morning, a thousand years from today, she had not had this planned.

The older woman pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow that spoke of her disapproval of Caroline's attitude, yet ultimately chose not to retort. Alternatively, she began to walk towards the tub in the center of the ring of torches, where Caroline saw for the first time a pile of clothes had been folded neatly. "Dress yourself; we have much to do today."

Complying, the first thing Caroline pulled from the pile was a linen underdress, coarse to the touch with a cotton string fastening the neckline together. Caroline quickly added it to her mental list of the ugliest clothes she had ever seen. While extending it out to look at it, she noticed something eerie; her right wrist was bare and unmarked.

"Where's my tattoo?" It was an almost indescribable feeling to look at the back of your own hands and not recognize them, but there she was, running her eyes over skin she had never seen before. Caroline began to search every inch of her bare body to find some part of herself she could remember, but it was in vain. All of the scars Damon had left littering her body were gone with different ones now in their place, none of which she could explain.

Freckles that she hadn't earned scattered themselves across her body, Caroline could almost hear the song Klaus had dedicated to Elena while he wore Alaric's face. She saw the dark purple birthmark shaped like a half moon just below the crook of her elbow, and she could taste the salt on Tyler's lips the day they hadn't been Tyler's at all. All of the signs she could see pointed her in a direction she didn't want to explore, but couldn't deny. There was writing on the wall, and Caroline could see it all clear as day. The witch had even given that speech about not being pulled from thin air.

"Am I possessing someone?!" Caroline hated herself for the question; she already knew the truth of it all, no matter how badly she wished it wasn't this way.

"If it eases your mind at all, it was no longer occupied by any other soul."

"So, I'm possessing a dead girl's body?"

"You have been for years now, ever since the night you died in your own."

Caroline dropped the dress back to the ground, her hands falling back into the familiar coping mechanism of running her hands through her hair, she notes how different it feels now, it had a new texture her fingers didn't recognize. She pulled it over her shoulder, intertwining it between her fingers as she looked at it all. She was still blonde, she saw, it was almost funny how that was the most comforting thing that passed through her mind all day.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're the least comforting person ever?" Anger was the only emotion Caroline felt that anchored her to all of this, everything else: the fear, guilt, sorrow, pain, it all threatened to drown her in this terrifying reality. The Witch fed into her need to hate something at this moment, and Caroline was almost grateful for her contempt.

"No. I am a very powerful witch; most find it in their best interest not to insult me. I would advise you to do the same." The older woman's whole demeanor was cold as she spoke, and she turned away from the vampire girl, her interest instead resting on a small oval shaped slab of what looked like a polished black rock, obsidian, Caroline recognized after a moment. "I couldn't create a new body for you from scratch, so I used one I had available." The dark woman held up the polished obsidian and looked into it, from where she stood behind her Caroline could see the other woman's reflection shine back. It wasn't a perfect reflection, more like using a phone screen than a mirror, but Caroline would take what she could get. The moment the witch held the polished rock over to her Caroline snatched it quickly.

She wasn't sure what she expected when she looked at herself. No one ever intends to look at their reflection and to see someone else, but Caroline had braced herself for it, she knew that this image would be entirely new for her. It wasn't, though, and that's what shocked her. It was her, though it wasn't. Her eyes were still blue, though now more blue-green than they had been. They were the same shape, yet had different lashes framing them. Her cheeks, chin, nose, lips, they were all where they had always been, shaped the same shapes, yet had differences she could hardly describe. She looked like she was her own twin sister, different, distinctly different, yet incredibly similar.

"I don't..." She cursed herself for falling further into the clueless blonde trope, but she couldn't figure this one out. "I don't understand. Why do I look... what did you do?"

"What I was told." The woman reached out and pulled the obsidian out of Caroline's hands, replacing it again with the linen dress. "I was informed you would be most comfortable in your skin, but since that wasn't an option, I performed a transfiguration spell instead. You may consider it a gift for accepting this task before you."

It was a gift; Caroline hated that. The anger she was trying to hold on to began to slip through her fingers, and she knew her semi-competent coping mechanism would slip away with it. Instead of speaking, or thinking about this ordeal she somehow had been caught up in, Caroline focused her eyes and thoughts on something more straightforward. She began to dress in the course underdress the witch had put back into her hands.

Once she covered herself with it, the woman handed her something else, silently and almost impatiently. It was another shift, this one blue instead of tan. Unlike the first, this one had no sleeves. Instead, it had straps that clasped to the front of the like an overall dress, and Caroline found herself trying to remember the last time she had ever been seen in public in overalls, possibly never. She put it on never-the-less and suppressed the urge to ask for anything else; beggars couldn't be choosers after all. The last items that would complete her new bizarre outfit were a long rope and a pair of leather shoes that looked way too small but fit Caroline's new feet perfectly. The cord was a mystery to her for a moment, but Caroline rejected the idea of asking for help, especially about fashion, so she tied it around her waist to sinch her dress around her curves to give her an attractive shape. Now wholly adorned, Caroline held her head high and almost struck a pose and spun. The ensemble was hideous, but Caroline could strut in a trash bag and make it look good.

"So, I'm guessing the next step in this whole plan is going to be re-introducing me to the Mikaelsons." Caroline was determined to keep moving through the day as quickly as possible. Once she got through today, it would all get more comfortable, right?

"Clever girl." The witch was almost as well versed in turning a compliment into an insult with only her tone as Caroline was, but Caroline refused to take the bait this time. It was after a beat of silence that the woman began to lead the way forward, abandoning the altar and entering the thick of the trees. Caroline was about to comment about the still lit torches and Smoaky the Bear, but with a backward glance, she saw they had all been extinguished. Even after years around Bonnie, Caroline was still always semi-startled by the control witches had over the elements.

Catching up to the woman and walking beside her Caroline broke the silence with a question that had been sitting at the back of her mind, Caroline asked, "What's your name, by the way?"

"I am the witch Ayana."

"I would say nice to meet you, but I'd be lying. I'm guessing you already know who I am."

"I do, and I do not. I know who you once were, but you are no longer Caroline Forbes, you are something new. Something created for this one purpose alone. It would be sensible of you to decide upon a new name for yourself; Caroline is no longer suitable, no longer who you are."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Caroline was getting tired of witchy riddles.

"Well, names are a powerful thing with magic of their own. Caroline Forbes is the name of a girl yet to be born. A thousand years from now, that name will be spoken by the girl's parents, friends, lovers; that name will connect that girl to those people, that place, and that time. If we wish to connect who you are now to where and when you are at present, then we must sever those ties and form new ones that will anchor you here, to them and this age."

"Magic has a lot of dumb rules," Caroline said with a roll of her eyes, "why can't anything ever be easy?" She quietly asked herself.

"Those rules are what keep the world safe, and in balance. So hold your tongue, for the spirits are always listening, and have the potential to hold it for you."

After that, they walked in silence until they came upon a small hut surrounded by dozens of thriving plants Caroline didn't recognize for the most part, though she knew a handful: Sage, Rosemary, Vervain. The building was Ayana's house, the witch's garden gave it away. Even though this was the only structure they had come across, Ayana continued walking past it and into the thicket behind the house. It was clear to Caroline that Ayana wasn't about to invite a vampire into her home.

It wasn't long before they saw another building appear between the trees. It was smaller than the shed Caroline's father once had in his backyard. Caroline couldn't help but think that the sorry excuse of a building before her now was closer to an outhouse than anything even remotely livable.

"This is where you will be living," Ayana said, "it's where the sick go to die, but I see nothing wrong with giving it to one already dead."

"Of course it is." Caroline sighed out exasperatedly; this day refused to get any better. She stepped forward and opened the poor pretense of a door, somewhat surprised that she could walk into it without a direct invitation. The inside of the cottage was no prettier than the outside, and the only accommodations it provided were a pile of furs on the dirt floor beside a rock pile Caroline assumed was meant to pass as a fireplace. She was mid imaginary redesign when she heard a pair of familiar voices in the distance. The sounds were soft, but Caroline focused in on them and heard them moderately clearly.

"I don't understand why our mother must drag us along with her to visit Ayana. We will all be seeing her later tonight at the festival."

"Hush now Rebekah, we are to welcome her back now while father is away on his hunt, you know how she feels about him." The note and softness of Klaus's voice almost made Caroline fight for breath for a moment; it was more tender than she had ever heard it, even in the moments she had believed he had taken his walls down to let her in.

"It is how everyone feels about him: fear. Though Ayana of all people should not, she is much more powerful than he with all of her magic."

"True, but it is hard not to be frightened of him." Again, the vulnerability in Klaus's voice was astonishing to Caroline, it was heartbreakingly human, and nothing Caroline had ever expected to hear in his accent. "Besides, it will be good to see Ayana again; her pilgrimage always takes her away for so long."

"You only say that because you think she might have brought something back for you." Rebekah accused her brother, and Klaus let out a breathy laugh that made Caroline's heart jolt, she had heard it once before on their date. He had been teasing her with her Miss Mystic application, and as they both laughed, Caroline had forgotten to be afraid of him, had let herself feel safe. She had been, a treasonous voice whispered to her, but she thrust it away.

"Now, I am sure Niklaus has more than greed in his mind, Rebekah. Ayana is a friend of our family, and of our village. I need not remind you she pulled the lot of you out of me, so I would advise you to stop complaining about welcoming her home before I have a mind to tell her to put you back in, so you may have the time to learn some courtesy." It was Esther that had spoken then, chastising her daughter in the way only a mother could. Caroline had only ever heard the voice of the Original's matriarch once, as she gave her speech about her family during the Mikaelson's ball.

"I believe that would be more of punishment on you than her my friend." It wasn't until Caroline heard Ayana's voice outside that she realized that the dark witch hadn't followed her into the shed, or that the Mikaelson family were so near.

"My dearest friend, how were your travels?" Esther's voice was honey-laced as she spoke to her fellow witch.

"Eventful. It is my voyage, and what occurred during it, that has me out here by the infirmary." Caroline could feel the cover story about to fall from Ayana's lips; she had heard her fair share of them in her time as a vampire.

"I found a girl by the sea, cowering in the shadows, half dead already. I healed her as much as I could, and when she awoke, she told me of her story. You see, her village had been ransacked and plundered by a band of Vikings."

"But we left the Vikings back in the old world; they're another life away entirely." Esther's voice was incredulous, and Caroline knew she might not buy the story Ayana was spinning.

"She told me they had killed her entire village, leaving only her to take as a wife. The girl wept as she recounted to me how they threw her onto a ship and sailed away from her homeland. Months passed on the sea, and they began to run out of supplies. The men and the women they had captured began to die of starvation, dehydration, madness." The emotion Ayana began to put into her ruse almost fooled Caroline for a moment, and she hoped it would trick Esther as well, the whole plan relied on it.

"Most of them were dead by the time the ship crashed ashore, miles from where my husband is buried. His grave is the only remarkable landmark for measures and is where she found herself by the time I came to lay flowers for him. It was only by the grace of God and the kindness of the spirits that she lived through it all. I could not abandon her, yet I have nothing to offer besides shelter here." There was only a single heartbeat's worth of silence before Caroline heard the encroaching footsteps. The door was open once again, and Caroline turned to stand face to face with the witch of the original family.

Her hair was longer than Caroline remembered from the ball, and she wore a long-sleeved green dress instead of black. Elena's locket was swaying from her neck, and Caroline realized quickly how much more natural it looked on the witch than it ever had on her best friend. The woman said nothing, but rushed into the cabin and gently grasped Caroline's shoulders, as if she were comforting her, which Caroline supposed was her intention.

It was almost instantaneous upon contact that the original witch withdrew her hands with a flinch and a gasp. Esther looked at Caroline with something in her eyes that Caroline knew wouldn't bode well. Without missing a beat, however, Ayana stepped into the already cramped and overcrowded little hut and spoke.

"You can feel her tragedy, can't you? The death she walked away from."

The expression in Esther's eyes changed then, from distrust to almost maternal compassion, "How much you must have lost, dear girl. Who was it that you lost that could wound you so deeply."

Lost. That word overwhelmed Caroline. What had she lost? "Everyone. Everything." It was nearly comedic how quickly even the barest hint of empathy broke Caroline's composure. With a single question, the mother of the most deadly force to ever exist had Caroline crumpling down with the waves of emotion that had been crashing against her ever since she saw Klaus standing in the Salvatore's driveway.

"We shall find a place for you yet, sweet thing. Look at me now," Esther spoke so kindly, and with such intensity in her voice, that Caroline couldn't help but think of her father; the way he had never judged her for breaking down, yet always elicited in her the strength to hold her head up high. Caroline did not stop weeping, but managed to look the motherly woman in the eyes, "give us your name."

For a moment, Caroline almost let slip the truth, her real name, at at the very least what had been her name only hours before. She knew Ayana had told her to cut the ties of her old life, but she couldn't. Her parent's faces bore themselves into her heart, and Caroline couldn't forget them. When she spoke, she told both a truth and a lie.

"Elizabeth. Elizabeth Williamson." It was as far away from 'Caroline Forbes' as she could get while still being familiar to her. Her middle name was, in fact, Elizabeth, and her father's name was William, so Caroline wasn't lying so much as forming the truth around convenience.

"Dry your tears then, Elizabeth. There is nothing that can replace what you have lost, but this is the new world, and it is yours now. The people here shall become your new family, your new friends. We shall fill the holes in your heart one by one until it is no longer so fragile. I promise you, here and now, that your heart will mend."

Caroline didn't know if she believed the older woman, but she so desperately wanted to that she willed away her tears, and raised her chin high. It was only then that she saw the human Niklaus Mikaelson standing in her new doorway, looking at her sympathetically. There was nothing humorous about the circumstances she had happened into, but when Caroline saw the big evil original hybrid with pretty golden curls cascading down his shoulders, she could not for the life of her keep her laughter at bay.


End file.
